Update: Progress on SB 463 – Death Penalty Suspension bill

Update 2.22.16: The Senate floor debate and vote on SB 463 will be on Thursday, March 3! Please write a letter to the editor (LTE) of your local newspaper and to the Union Leader today! See our LTE tool here (sample talking points are provided on that page).

Update 2.16.16: On Tuesday, February 16, the Senate Judiciary held an executive session on SB 463. There was little debate or discussion, and as the members of that committee are mostly pro-repeal Senators, they voted 3-to-1 for an “OTP” or ought-to-pass recommendation on the bill. Voting for: Senators Daniels, Pierce, and Cataldo. Voting against: Senator Carson. (Sen. Lasky was absent but supports the bill). The bill will now move to the full Senate, perhaps as soon as the week Starting February 29. Stay tuned!

On Thursday, January 28, we held an effective hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the proposed death penalty suspension bill. More than 20 people testified in favor of the bill, and only 2 against. Supporters included a death row exoneree, clergy, law enforcement, a former FBI Special Agent, a former NH Attorney General, a former NH Surpreme Court Justice, several attorneys, several murder victim family members, among others.

(Concord) – A broad group of people testified today in support of SB 463, which suspends the implementation of the death penalty until it can be ensured that it is not being imposed on innocent people. The bill is sponsored by Senator Kevin Avard and Senator Gary Daniels and was heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ray Krone, before his exoneration in 2002, spent more than 10 years in Arizona prisons, including nearly three years on death row, for a murder he did not commit.

“In 1991 my world was turned upside down when Kim Ancona was murdered in a Phoenix bar and I was arrested for the crime. The case against me was based largely on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a supposed ‘expert’ witness, who claimed bite marks found on the victim matched my teeth. This testimony was later discredited but I was sentenced to death in 1992.

“In 2002 I became the 100th person to be exonerated from death row when DNA found at the murder scene indicated the guilt of another man. My situation is not unique, innocent people are being executed and it must stop,” said Krone.

Barbara Keshen, former prosecutor for the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office and current chair of the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, told the committee that despite New Hampshire having an excellent justice system, it isn’t perfect. She talked about a New Hampshire case she handled in which an innocent man came very close to being convicted.

“To date over 150 death row inmates have been exonerated after evidence surfaced that they were wrongly convicted,” said Keshen. “These exonerations resulted from mistaken eyewitness identifications, incompetent legal counsel, shoddy forensic results, jailhouse snitches and coerced confessions. Can we really say that it is impossible for an innocent person to be executed in this state?” asked Keshen.

Tom Parker is a 30-year law enforcement veteran who spent 24 years with the FBI and has conducted or supervised over 10,000 Federal and state criminal investigations. For the past 20 years, he has served as an expert witness on police practices and investigative competency in homicide cases all across the country.

“In homicide investigations, I have seen countless instances of falsified investigative reports, witness tampering, erroneous or coached eye witness identifications, the destruction of exculpatory evidence, fictitious crime lab results including incompetent DNA testing, and perjured testimony. The most frightening part of all of this is the volume and frequency of these transgressions committed by police officers. We arrest and convict innocent people almost every day in this country, and there is now a growing body of proof that we have convicted and executed innocent people for crimes they did not commit. As long as we have a death penalty in America, we will continue to execute innocent people,” said Parker.

Also testifying before the committee was Sam Millsap, a lawyer in practice for over 40 years and currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at St. Mary’s University Law School. “When I was the elected District Attorney in San Antonio, Texas, I oversaw the indictment, prosecution, and conviction of Ruben Cantu. I asked the jury to sentence him to die based on the eyewitness testimony of a single person and they did. Years after his execution that key eyewitness recanted his testimony. There is no appeal after an execution takes place. Ruben Cantu is dead and I have to live with that every day,” said Millsap.